I have just started to notice that many of what I think of as good, specific tags are listed as synonyms for broader categories. For example, php-sessions and php-frameworks are synonyms for php. This makes it impossible to subscribe selectively to topics. I imagine there could be other ramifications, as well. It seems to me that using synonyms in this was is not the intended use. From the Help page on Tag Synonyms:

Tag synonyms allow us to fix incorrect tags by substituting them with the correct tags.

A good example of an appropriate synonym is myphpadmin → phpmyadmin. This fixes a typo or misunderstanding of the actual term.

So what is it about tags that people are so eager to reassign specific terms to general catch-alls? I am interested in questions about jQuery events at the moment, but I can't subscribe to that; only to jquery, which is ridiculous. Or am I misunderstanding something?

I find a number of these reclassifications actively unhelpful. Can I ask them to be repealed?

seems php5 is actually a synonym for php nowadays. Really don't see a point in that.
– eisMay 3 '14 at 11:52

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A tag with a typo is not a good synonym (I haven't seen (m)any typo synonyms yet) - these should simply be retagged and burned. I'm not sure who wrote that help page, but "incorrect" seems ... incorrect.
– Bernhard BarkerMay 3 '14 at 12:32

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@eis I'd say it's reasonable to assume a question tagged with a language and without a specific version is about a recent version of the language; and questions specific to an older version should use a version-specific tag. This makes the php5 tag superfluous as it does only add very little information to a question already tagged php - I'd just assume any php question is about php5 unless it is also tagged with e.g. php3. This of course varies for each language, e.g. for python I'd assume any question not tagged 2 or 3 is version-agnostic for the most recent python2/3 versions.
– l4mpiMay 3 '14 at 12:40

@l4mpi This may be true for recent questions but no longer a few years from now. Questions that were asked a few years ago with the tag ruby-on-rails (just a random example I encountered today.) People that are very familiar with rails will know the telltale signs which version they are talking about but a person rather new to it wont. and THEY are the one that need to find out whether or not that answer is applicable to them or not. Tags help with that if done properly.
– StephanMay 4 '14 at 22:56

@Stephan I guess it depends on the language. With Java it makes no sense to tag a general question with a specific version as Java is expected to be backwards compatible; with a language as rapidly changing as ruby it might fit better. But still, many good answers on SO arise from pointing out improvements of later versions, e.g. someone might answer an old ruby question with "in 1.9 you can now use x". This is potentially way more helpful to future visitors than an answer specific to a deprecated version, but it would feel weird if the question would then still be tagged with that version.
– l4mpiMay 5 '14 at 15:05

2 Answers
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Sure, and meta is totally the right place to do that. But you're going to have to make a good argument.

For example, "php-sessions" and "php-frameworks" are synonyms for "php".

Oh, interesting. I was wondering what happened to php-sessions. Figured someone burninated it as it only had like two hundred questions when I last looked, never thought to check the synonym list.

All questions about PHP sessions are questions about PHP. PHP is one of the few (only?) languages that have built in HTTP sessions. It's a core feature. I suppose the synonym makes sense.

Unfortunately, regardless of whether or not php-sessions is a thing, people are still going to dual-tag phpsessions, because the average user has the tag-IQ of a turnip. It's probably better for the tag to be a synonym, though perhaps of sessions instead of php.

Remember, splitting traffic between two tags is bad.

This makes it impossible to subscribe selectively to topics.

Do you really, really think that you'd subscribe to a php-sessions tag?

Really? Think about the way it's actually (not) used. It's not worth watching.

Let's think about php-frameworks for a moment. Seven times out of ten, that tag is going to cover an existing PHP framework (like "I'm using the Symfony 2 PHP framework and ..."). The proper tagging for any question question would not be with the php-frameworks tag, but with a tag for the framework itself.

So, what about the other third of the questions? Well, they're going to fall into two categories:

Which framework should I choose / compare and contrast / etc

I'm building a framework and ...

The first is off topic as opinion-based, library recommendation, or too broad. We don't want tags that encourage off-topic questions. (I'd kill for some honeypots though.)

It's still a really weak tag. It's fluff. Noise. Adds nothing to the discussion. Doesn't categorize the question. Doesn't help the question become easier to find. "I'm building a framework." Welcome to the club, buddy. Every PHP developer does at some point. It's a freaking rite of passage. If you haven't written at least two frameworks, you aren't a realScotsman PHP developer.

Would you actively subscribe to it if framework-building questions were the only things it discussed?

Really?

I certainly wouldn't subscribe to it. I'd burninate it. The synonym list says that it was last rewritten two days ago. At time of creation, 165 questions were retagged. In the year and five months since then, an additional 230 questions were retagged inline. It's a shame we can't see those questions, because that'd actually be interesting...

No, I wouldn't subscribe to php-frameworks; it just caught my eye as possibly a weird one to be rolled up into php. To my mind, more specific tagging leads to better search results—questions about the phrase, rather than just to mentioning it in passing. As far as what I would actually subscribe to, that might be php-session-management. jquery-events in another. No dice. Never, ever will I want to subscribe to "php" or "jquery".
– Greg PerhamMay 3 '14 at 18:00

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"All questions about PHP sessions are questions about PHP." All questions about PHP are questions about preprocessors; all questions about preprocessors are questions about programming, etc…
– Greg PerhamMay 3 '14 at 18:01

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I think my reasoning boils down to this: subset is not a synonym of synonym, but that seems to be the way tag synonyms are being used a lot. That seems misguided. Categories are hierarchical, while tags generally are not. Using tag synonyms does not achieve a hybrid because the synonymized(?) term gets not just relegated but subsumed entirely.
– Greg PerhamMay 3 '14 at 18:28

For the record, sessions are not built into PHP, but into the SAPI.
– Benjamin GruenbaumMay 4 '14 at 17:21